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S. Howard St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

Come with me, won’t you, as I continue my exploration of the construction zone on and around East Kalamazoo Street?

Nice. I should start rating stamp impressions. I give this one 4.5/5 Oscars.

This healthy-looking impression heralds something exciting: a new run of sidewalk where no proper sidewalk was before. In Lansing Township. I previously commented on this block, which is the west side of South Howard Street north of Kalamazoo, saying that the sidewalk on it is incomprehensibly intermittent. This spot is actually next to the parking lot of Dagwood’s, which, as noted in another entry, previously left no room for a meaningful sidewalk. The parking lot barrier went nearly to the street, and the narrow margin was filled with some crumbling asphalt, hardly anything one could call a sidewalk. The barrier is now (I assume temporarily) gone, and there is a proper sidewalk in place.

Standing at the north end of the new walk, looking south toward Kalamazoo.

The sidewalk runs along Howard only as far as the end of Dagwood’s lot. After that, there is a frustrating gap before it picks up again. The gap is actually where the (unpaved) driveway of a recently-demolished house was. I don’t know why there is no sidewalk there. Perhaps cars coming and going crumbled it so badly it disappeared. Perhaps there was never a sidewalk there, and the spot where the sidewalk picks up – in front of the now-gone house – was its original extent. This is just part of the mystifying unpredictability of sidewalks in this neighborhood.

Standing near the northwest corner of Kalamazoo and Howard, looking north. You can see that the sidewalk doesn’t quite join up with the one in front of the vacant lot.

I’m delighted they are putting in a new sidewalk here. I’m also very frustrated that are getting so close to joining it up with the existing sidewalk and not putting in those few extra blocks. Come on.

Guys, WTF is up with this?
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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

This is another one from my recent exploration of new sidewalks in the construction area on East Kalamazoo Street. These are going to start getting more interesting, I promise. (More interesting to anyone sufficiently interested in sidewalks and the east side of Lansing, anyway.) This one is at the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and South Howard Street, in front of the Amoco station.

What’s notable about this bit of pavement is that there didn’t used to be any sidewalk here. Past the gas station parking lot on Kalamazoo, there was just a bit of grass ending in a blind curb, and likewise on the other side of Howard. Strangely, despite being so hostile to pedestrians, there is a crosswalk signal here to allow crossing Howard. (I can’t recommend it. There’s no marked crosswalk and usually a lot of traffic turning onto Howard, which becomes a feeder lane for 127/496.) The newly-laid walk is a new curb cut, leading pedestrians across Howard. It remains to be seen whether they will do anything else to make this corner a bit more inviting to cross on foot.

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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

This stamp is across Mifflin Avenue from Monday’s, just over the border into Lansing Township on East Kalamazoo Street. Unlike the last one, this one is not a very deep impression, which is a disappointment to a sidewalk observer such as myself. It’s in front of the Village Party Store, a well known convenience and liquor store with its own coin laundry. It’s a staple of the neighborhood, but to the best of my recollection I’ve never been inside.

I was curious about the history of the place and a quick search of old State Journals turned up that from at least 1939-1955 it was the Ellis Food Market as well as the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Ellis. Their advertisements in the 1940s promote their “Special Designated Liquor and Beer Store Hours 7 A. M. to 2 A. M.” These days, the Village Party Store has a bit of a reputation for being in a tough area (though I walk past it at night all the time without incident), so it’s amusing to note that it was already the victim of shenanigans in the 1950s. On July 17, 1954, the State Journal reports that a trio of people from Detroit were “accused of breaking into the Ellis Food market, 2601 E. Kalamazoo st. The burglars were surprised in their car while leaving the establishment after stealing a quantity of liquor but escaped in a wild chase in which several shots were fired at them.”

On June 23, 1967, the State Journal reports that Mrs. Lynell Ellis of this address pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Uniform Housing Code: “In a warrant signed by housing inspector Ted Tycocki, Mrs. Ellis was charged with not having hot running water and with having improper fuses, hazardous switches and defective electrical fixtures in a house at 521 W. Lenawee St.” I don’t know whether the Food Market was still in operation at that time. By 1983, the address belonged to the Village Party Store.

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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

I walked into the construction area on East Kalamazoo Street again to check out other sidewalk changes. This time I went to the north side of the street, and found this stamp near the northwest corner of Mifflin Avenue, just inside Lansing city limits. This is a particularly crisp impression and should last a good while, which of course is what I like to see in a sidewalk stamp!

A nearby trailer also confirmed the identity of the contractor. As I previously guessed, it is indeed E.T. MacKenzie, headquartered in Grand Ledge.

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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

This is across Mifflin Avenue from the one posted in the last two entries. It’s on the southeast corner of Mifflin and East Kalamazoo Street, in other words, just outside the border of the city of Lansing, making it a rare example of a stamp in Lansing Township. As part of the recent construction on Kalamazoo, they have put in a new curb cut on this side with a single block of pavement. No further sidewalk has been laid yet and I am guessing it won’t be, since there wasn’t any there before, just a ramshackle parking lot that seems to belong to University Foreign Car across the street.

This is upside-down because I’m standing at the curb cut and looking east to show where the tiny bit of sidewalk ends.
This stake is actually back on the west side of Mifflin, but I photographed it to show that what I keep calling a “curb cut,” they apparently call a “sidewalk opening.”
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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., RIP

Last time I posted the blog’s newest stamp to date, a MacKenzie 2022 stamp from the southwest corner of East Kalamazoo Street and Mifflin Avenue. Today I am posting the fastest stamp removal I have ever seen. Last night I walked past to discover that the brand-new slab bearing the remarkably short-lived MacKenzie stamp had inexplicably been removed.

Why would they put in new sidewalk during a construction project that hadn’t finished yet, only to tear it right back out? I have no solution for this mystery.

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E. Kalamazoo St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

Here it is, the new title holder for newest stamp in the blog, from the southwest corner of East Kalamazoo Street and Mifflin Avenue. This piece of sidewalk has been installed recently as part of a construction project on Kalamazoo; I think it is related to upgrading the sewer there. Across Mifflin there is a newly constructed curb cut but, as yet, no further sidewalk. This is consistent with how it was before; the curb cut on the other side of Mifflin has always led only to a parking lot, but it’s a much more substantial curb cut now, at least.

It’s interesting to see MacKenzie pop back up, since the only other stamp I have collected from them – I assume it’s them – is from 2003 and in a different style. I like how huge the date is in this one, although I worry it’s a bit too shallow to ensure enduring readability. At least city sidewalk projects aren’t all failing to put names upon the walks lately.

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Rumsey Ave., Don Plantz, 2020

Here’s a new stamp for the blog. Unfortunately I can’t tell you much about it that isn’t right there on the tin. Don Plantz Concrete, LLC, has no Web site that I can find, but OpenCorporates says it was incorporated in 2018 in East Lansing, and it seems to still be active.

This stamp is on the driveway of a house on the west side of Rumsey Avenue’s northernmost block.

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Black Ct., Martin J. Concrete, 2021

After collecting the stamps from James Street, I decided to walk a little way and see what else I could find, since I’m not very familiar with the neighborhood. I discovered a funny little curved stub of a street called Black Court between James and Dodge River Drive. It looked like the perfect street to find old sidewalks, but as I turned the corner I saw that I was too late. The sidewalks and curbs had clearly been reconstructed at the same time as the one on James, and so all the sidewalk stamps were Martin J. Concrete 2021. These are from the north side of the street in front of the house at the dead end.

Looking at the Google Street View, I can see that the previous sidewalk did not go quite to the curb like it does now. There was a tiny lawn strip, and the sidewalk was abnormally narrow. The curbs also looked shallower. It looks like a clear improvement, yet I have to admit I’m sorry that the new sidewalk lacks certain aesthetic qualities of the old. It used to end by curving gracefully up to the front walk of this house, instead of just truncating a little past it.

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James St., Martin J. Concrete, 2021

After visiting the Turner-Dodge House, I decided to walk around the vicinity a little in search of sidewalk stamps. I had walked this section of James Street looking for stamps in 2020 and didn’t find anything of note, but this time I found that the whole stretch of sidewalk had been redone, the sidewalk had been marked, and best of all, it was by a contractor as yet unknown in this blog.

Martin J. Concrete is based in Coopersville, as the stamp says, which is in the Grand Rapids metro area. Disappointingly, their Web site lacks a company history. They describe themselves as “a West Michigan based Concrete Road Contractor specializing in concrete road construction throughout the State of Michigan.” They also have a page showcasing various major sidewalk projects they have done as well as curb installation. That may be why they were hired for this particular job; the sidewalk here is one of those rare spots around the city (mostly, I assume, on the earliest streets) where there is no lawn extension, so the sidewalk is flush to the curb.

Sorry about the exposure. My camera’s light meter is broken and I don’t always remember to compensate for that.

The stamp uses a template I have seen very often in new sidewalk stamps. The city’s O & M department uses it, as well as numerous private contractors. It’s neat enough, but as a weird connoisseur of sidewalk markings I prefer them less standardized.